Japan's rapid ascent from economic decimation and military occupation to the world's second largest economy is often described as miraculous. So stupendous was the growth of Japan's economy during the 1960s and 1970s that by the 1980s, numerous books had been published with hubristic titles about Japan's position vis-à-vis the United States in the world political economy, such as Japan as Number One and Japan in the Passing Lane. Japan is lauded for its economic prowess and often touted as a model of development to be emulated by other countries. Its economic position in international affairs, however, is not matched with commensurate political influence. This is due in part to Article 9 in the “MacArthur” Constitution in which Japan declared it would forgo offensive military capabilities. Moreover, an avuncular military relationship with the United States allowed Japan to free ride on American grand strategy during the Cold War. This strategy was a linchpin of the Yoshida doctrine and is still the foundation of Japan's security policy in the post–Cold War era. The dichotomy between Japan's economic position and its political position in international affairs has led to a myriad of catchphrases regarding Japan's foreign policy. It is referred to negatively as engaging in “checkbook diplomacy,” that Japan is a “bank with a flag,” that Japan has “power without purpose,” or that Japan is merely “buying power.”

In recent decades, women's movements have mobilized in a range of contexts in order to press for international and national governmental responses to violence against women. Despite the scope of such activity in the public realm, there has been relatively little scholarly analysis of cross-national variations in governmental responses to the problem of violence against women. Laurel Weldon's study is an important response to this scholarly gap in both the fields of policy studies and of women and politics.

The search for a fuller understanding of how development and democracy interact in Third World countries continues to interest analysts and policymakers alike, especially when applied to the Arab world—the region least predisposed to either development or democracy. Competing political economy and political culture theories have been advanced to explain the pervasive absence of democratic politics in a context of alternative socioeconomic performances ranging from advanced to backward. Tunisia and Morocco, former French-colonized Arab-Muslim states located in northern Africa, serve as middle-income countries whose politics are undemocratic but whose social and economic performance has been moderately successful. Rather than limiting himself to either of these alternative theoretical approaches, Gregory White locates his analysis at the intersection of the external international political economy and the internal domestic economy and society. By elaborating these case studies within the framework of the European Union and its impact on peripheral middle-income actors, he advances both our understanding of state-society relations in transitional polities and the interaction that takes place between such polities and the powerful global forces that configurate and constrain their domestic policy choices.

Ted Gurr's Minorities at Risk Project began in 1986 as the first comparative large-n study of politically active ethnic groups around the globe. Now it is the single most influential scholarly resource on the subject, a fund of data generating volumes of published research, and—in an era when political science is often accused of irrelevance—providing valuable guidance for policymakers. Peoples Versus States, the second comprehensive report of findings from this project, builds on and extends the analysis introduced earlier in Minorities at Risk (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).

Claiming that great powers determine the character of an international system is unremarkable. The difficult task is to show how great powers have created and maintained an international system that works in their interests. This is the job Alex Roberto Hybel undertakes in Made by the USA. He seeks to show how the United States first responded to the Europedominated state system, and then upon rising to great power status, how it sought to shape the international system to its own benefit. The contemporary relevance of Hybel's effort is for assessing whether the United States can maintain control over the international system into the twenty-first century.

The political economy of the rise, influence, and impact of institutional investors on the development policies of states has been seriously undertheorized in the disciplines of political science and economics. Mary Ann Haley's pathbreaking book, Freedom and Finance joins a range of works in the past decade that have sought to reverse this negligence by investigating the political implications of the ascendancy of portfolio investment in the developing world. Haley provides a useful overview of the political efforts of nation-states, multilateral institutions, investment banks, and money managers to pry open markets in societies otherwise starved for capital. This cooperation between political and private sector elites favored schemes that offered opportunities to investment banks and money managers, based for the most part in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, to expand their purchases of stocks, bonds, and various securities options in the developing world. In this context, she argues that institutional investors, including large-scale corporations such as investment banks and money managers of pension and mutual funds, have consolidated their economic power to the point of exercising political influence over governmental policies in the lessdeveloped world.